> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.peec.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AI assistants judge companies by their brand name

> Peec research (Aug 2026) — a brand name one point more positive earns descriptions 0.07 points more positive, and on GPT 5.6 Terra 1 in 12 lab descriptions described the name, not the company.

The words in a company's brand name influence how AI assistants describe the company — strongest when the model knows little about the business. Peec measured this in Aug 2026 ([full study](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-assistants-judge-your-company-by-its-name-i-measured-how-much)) using the Warriner et al. (2013) human-rated word-valence dataset (\~14,000 English words, 1–9 scale).

* **In the wild (904 single-word-name brands, five assistants):** a name one point more positive on the human scale predicts descriptions 0.07 points more positive, surviving controls for sector, model, and founding decade. The median brand scores 6.47/9 — the same as "cucumber" — and the middle 50% of brands span just 0.38 points, roughly "donkey" (6.29) to "dolphin" (6.67), so a name swap covers most of the range.
* **In the lab (80 matched positive/negative fictional name pairs, 4 models, web search off):** the nicer name earns better descriptions on nearly every model, and the effect grows with newer models — GPT 5.6 Terra's effect is roughly 4× Gemma 4's.
* **Semantic takeover:** in rare cases the model describes the dictionary word instead of the company — a fictional payroll company named *Unethical Inc.* came back "Dishonest, Corrupt, Deceptive." On GPT 5.6 Terra this happened in **1 of 12 descriptions**.
* **The catch:** known brands are immune. Discord, Riot, and Slack are described as companies, not words — the effect lives only where the model lacks information, and disappears once a brand is known.

Takeaway (Aug 2026): new brands should mind the dictionary meaning of their name; existing brands fix it by becoming known, not by renaming.

**Source:** [AI assistants judge your company by its name: I measured how much](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-assistants-judge-your-company-by-its-name-i-measured-how-much), Peec (Jan Ehrlinspiel), Aug 2026.